What Happens When the Boundaries of Intimacy Are Tested?

Elijah shares a powerful journey exploring the intersection of trust, love, and trauma within the community, revealing the complexities of navigating relationships. 

This clip episode delves into themes of accusation, vulnerability, and healing in the face of adversity. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Intimacy and Boundaries in Relationships
• 10:13 Navigating Uncomfortable Situations in Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

For the audience's sake, we're going to be transferring over to Elijah's story. Now there's a connection between these two brothers here and Elijah. I just wanted to give you some space to talk and tell your story. So Mike's yours.

Speaker 2: 0:25

I met Rose through an overlap with Jacob Me, jacob and another trans brother of ours. We were actually hanging out for the first time. It was the first time that I had met Jacob and it was right after my hysterectomy. I really wasn't shouldn't have been working out, but I really wanted to meet him. I'd been following him for years and the other trans brother for years and I wanted to build in that community. I wanted coming from a military standpoint and just getting into the queer community. I'd been trans on my own for so long I was grasping at community. This was in 2019, towards the end of their relationship.

Speaker 2: 1:17

We met up after our workout. Jacob said that he had to drop something off for her, for his girlfriend and I didn't know who his girlfriend was at the time and we went to a photo shoot for Tomboy X. I didn't know that's what it was, but I was amazed. It was the first time that I was seeing all these different queer bodies and different queer people. I was a little bit starstruck. I was a little bit starstruck. I knew that she came over to introduce herself and she was in a bra and underwear set for the photo shoot. She had hugged Jacob, she hugged Skylar. Her hug for Skylar was a little bit more like leaned out, and this is something that since then, in that moment, we all had feelings about and since then we've talked about too. That kind of showed pattern is when she came in to hug me, she really hugged me In a way that was like very obvious to everyone that was around and they were dating at that time. So I didn't really know how to react. I did think that she was pretty, but I was still very awkward. I had just started newly flirting with someone else who ended up being another one of my abusers in the long haul. But that was kind of the end of that moment. We were supposed to go out for dinner later that night, all of us together. I would find out later that they didn't because of an argument that surrounded me. You know, jacob calling her in of like hey, you know what was that. And her like denying it.

Speaker 2: 3:11

A couple months would go by and there is an incident in community where I was being accused of harm and that was a hard moment for me. I come from harm and I'm very self-aware to know that if you do not check yourself, you can become your harm. And that was my biggest fear. That's right. And when I got my accusations I was terrified. Yes, and I didn't know all of. I wasn't being told at first who I was being accused by or who I was being accused of. I was just being told that I was this thing. And then later people would start popping out the woodworks, some people that I, that I never would have expected. But I showed up in community. But I showed up in community.

Speaker 2: 4:08

A restorative plan was asked of me. Though I did not agree with all of the terms on my restorative justice, I did give the ones that I could. The only one that I didn't give was delete my social media, but I did stay away from community spaces. I did give the respect to not talk to my accused, to not be in spaces with my accused, to de-platform from sponsorships, to de-platform from community. It was kind of thrust upon me in a way that there wasn't really healing space to be had.

Speaker 2: 4:39

So I was in my own vulnerable sense of really trying to hold community because the things and the accusers that I was being accused of were the same people that had done that harm to me. But when I was told that I was the one doing the harm, I immediately reflected in of like it broke me. Like it broke me and she came out of nowhere and she immediately came with I don't believe them, I see you. And she came as a friend in a time where I really needed her. She comes with the positive affirmations and the safety Most Trojan horses do. She gave me affection and safety where I did not have it before. She was still dating another trans guy before me.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So this is a pattern of behavior from one trans mask to another trans mask.

Speaker 2: 5:45

Yeah, she was at the end of a relationship with a trans guy before me. When they broke up. I was her crying shoulder where she had come. I had known about an ex from her past, a cis man. I had known about a couple of people from her past that were just not on the same wavelength as her as far as affection and relationship and intimacy and what that could look like. I'm a person that has very intimate friendships. I love being close with my friends, but that doesn't mean that I have to like have sex with them. Friendships I love being close with my friends, but that doesn't mean that I have to have sex with them. Where she did not fully grasp that understanding, the lines are blurred. Her and that ex had broke up a week two weeks, so there's no crossover time as well.

Speaker 2: 6:39

She had just gotten her billboard in New York. It was her first billboard for folks health and I was hyping her up and I told her she should go see it. Like, go with someone that you trust, go see it. Like this is a moment that you shouldn't miss out on. You know, this is your moment. This is before I knew about the Jacob stuff. She asked if I was willing to go and I told her at the time I'd have to look into it. But I was just coming back into stability after being outcasted from community. She offered to pay for me so I flew down to Arizona and then we would fly to New York, other than seeing Rose in person at that photo shoot. I had never seen Rose in person, one-on-one before and that moment was like five minutes. We like dropped off our stuff, hugged, said hi, took a picture and left.

Speaker 1: 7:38

But she paid to flow you down and see you. Do you feel like that was intentional, with that pattern of behavior in hindsight, with what you now know?

Speaker 2: 7:51

Before I went down there she had told me about the Airbnb situation and she told me that it would be a one bed and if I was comfortable with that. And I said you know we're adults. Like it's going to be cheaper, it's New York, this is a last minute trip. Like you don't spend a whole lot of money trying to do extra stuff. You know we're going to be out adventuring most of the time. I wasn't even thinking. I was like this girl just got out of a breakup. I'm the person she's crying to about this breakup.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Well, they're trans as well, there's this expectation of safety with families.

Speaker 2: 8:27

I had not had that much experience in the trans dating culture I came from a military background and I had only dated cis girls and one AMAB non-binary person at that point and that that relationship was toxic and controlling and abusive. And coming out of that with Rose it felt so different, so loving, so safe. The femininity brought a sense of safety with it, almost, dare I say, a mommy feel to it, and she knows that and gender affirming.

Speaker 1: 9:02

I'm just hearing the two of your stories right now. It seems like there's a pattern of almost like overt sexuality to make you feel that vibrato is a trans mask guy which you know. We've got egos to ourselves and it's almost like it's targeted. But that's just what I'm hearing so far from my viewpoint here.

Speaker 2: 9:22

I flew down to Arizona. We were going to be there for one night and then, literally the next morning, catch the flight to New York. In my mind and in my intentions I was going as her friend.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you guys weren't dating or mentioning any of that yet, right?

Speaker 2: 9:41

We were friendly flirting, which is what she uses later.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:46

I'm a flirtatious person. I flirt with everybody. I flirt with this guy.

Speaker 1: 9:50

He's a good looking guy.

Speaker 2: 9:52

But we were friendly, flirting. She picks me up from the airport and she gives me that same hug from the photo shoot, tight and embracing, but at this point it feels like more, instead of this randomness, because you know you can tell when somebody hugs you. Yeah, there was likability behind it. We get back to her house. At the time she's living with her parents. Immediately my first time hanging out with her, I'm meeting her mom, her dad, her siblings, her little sister, that's rather fast for barely meeting someone.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Okay, sorry, go on.

Speaker 2: 10:31

She takes me out to the backyard where they have a pool. I am a big water person, I love it, and she's like we can go for a swim. We go put our suits on, we go out to the backyard. There is a sliding door between me and her parents and her sister's room looks down at the pool. We are swimming around and we're joking and we're flirting and she starts getting grabby and I try to like jokingly, reflect it and she's just like, if I swim to a place, she swims to a place and this is the part that kills me, because this is where she turns it on me. There was a point in the pool where she was being so grabby that I swam out of my swim trunks. Oh, wow, to try to like Get away and she sees it as this flirting moment of I was asking for it, I wanted it. How were you feeling in that moment? Her parents were right there. I had.

Speaker 2: 11:42

I come from a family, familial thing. I have family trauma. I have the quiet, don't say anything. They're just in the other room. What Jacob was saying is, when you come from previous harm, that fight or flight to just that. Fight or flight to just this isn't my, this wasn't my area, this isn't my home. I she paid for me to get here. I don't have a way to get back home. These are your parents and I am a black trans man, so I go along with it and I think we're just going to like play around in the pool and she I have my back to the wall of the pool and she gets naked and she starts going and I'm just not there. My mind is thinking about any second her parents could come through those doors or her sister could be looking down, and if I do anything, then I come off as the aggressive and I just came out of a situation of being accused of harm.

Speaker 1: 12:51

So you're in a rock and a hard place, then you.